Q: I’m a college administrator who deals with student orientation, which brings me to my question: Doesn’t “orientate” mean to face the east?

A: Etymologically, you’re right, but words have a way of straying from their original orientation.

The verb “orientate” first showed up in the mid-19th century with the meaning to “turn or face towards a specified direction; spec. to turn to the east,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Later in the 19th century, it came to be used figuratively in the sense of to put oneself “in the right position, esp. in relation to unfamiliar surroundings; to give direction to, guide; to tailor or adapt to specified circumstances.”

Still later in the century, the OED says, it took on the sense of to “align or position something relative to the point of a compass or some other specified position.”

The OED suggests that “orientate” may “perhaps” be a back formation from the noun “orientation.” (A back formation is a word formed by dropping a real or imagined part from another word.)

The noun “orientation,” in turn, was derived from the 18th-century verb “orient.”

The foundation for all these words is the noun “orient,” first recorded in the works of Chaucer in the late 14th century. It originally meant a region situated to the east.

Thus, the verb “orient” (first recorded in 1728) originally meant “to place or arrange (a thing or a person) so as to face the east,” according to the OED.

The more general senses of the verb “orient”— including “to position or align (a structure, etc.) with, or in a particular way relative to, the points of the compass, or other specified points,” or “to turn towards a specified point or direction”—developed from the middle to the late 19th century.

The OED notes that “orientate” is “more commonly used in British English than orient, while the latter is the more frequent of the two in American English.”

The dictionary adds that “orientate is commonly regarded as an incorrect usage in American English.” We wouldn’t go that far, but the older and more straightforward “orient” is generally preferred in the United States.

In case you’d like to read a bit more, we wrote a brief posting quite some time ago about “orient” and “orientate.”

[Note: We had a post on Jan. 20, 2020, about “disoriented”and “disorientated.”]

Check out our books about the English language

Q: Who’s George in the expression “By George!”?

A: The phrase is a mild oath or exclamation that had its beginnings in the late 1500s. The word “George” here is a substitute for “God,” as are words like “golly,” “ginger,” “gosh,” “gum,” and so on in other similar euphemistic oaths.

The expression began life as “fore (or for) George” and “before George,” according to published references in the Oxford English Dictionary. These were milder versions of “before God,” “fore God,” and so on.

The OED’s earliest example is from Ben Jonson’s 1598 play Every Man in His Humor: “I, Well! he knowes what to trust to, for George.”

The next citation in the dictionary is from John Dryden’s 1680 comedy The Kind Keeper: “Before George, ’tis so!”

The OED’s first “by George” quotation is from a 1694 translation of Rudens, a comedy by Plautus: “By George, you shan’t be a Sowce the better for what’s in it.”

Sometimes, according to the dictionary, “George!” is used by itself, minus all the prepositions. Here’s an example from Archibald Clavering Gunter’s 1888 novel Mr. Potter of Texas: “George! isn’t it horribly lonely?”

In case you’d like to read more, we’ve had several items on the blog about such euphemisms, including a posting a few years back about “gol dang it,” “gosh darn it,” “dag nab it,” and others. (And, as we’ve written on the blog, you can add “For Pete’s sake!” to the list.)

You didn’t ask, but some readers may wonder who the Scott is in “Great Scott!” This interjection, too, is a believed to be  euphemistic, the OED says, a mild form of “Great God!” that originated in mid-19th-century America.

But in this case, the “Scott” was probably real. Evidence suggests, the OED says, that the name inserted into the oath was that of a revered American general, Winfield Scott. As Oxford explains:

“Winfield Scott, Commanding General of the United States Army (1841-61) and Whig party presidential candidate (1852), was a popular national figure in the United States in the mid 19th cent., celebrated as a hero for his role in the Mexican-American War (1846-8).”

The first example of “Great Scott!” cited in the OED dates from an American journal published in 1856. But this 1871 example, from John William de Forest’s novel  Overland, clearly shows the connection with General Scott:

“ ‘Great—Scott!’ he gasped in his stupefaction, using the name of the then commander-in-chief for an oath, as officers sometimes did in those days.”

[Note: This post was updated on Jan. 18, 2015.]

Check out our books about the English language

Q: What is the origin of the word “hobnob” and was it ever spelled “hobknob”? By the way, my maiden name is “O’Connor.”

A: It’s nice to hear from another O’Connor. Actually, Pat’s last name (“O’Conner”) was misspelled somewhere along the way and should be “O’Connor” too.

Etymologically, the verb “hobnob” is believed to have its origins in early versions of “to have or have not,” which seems a far cry from what it now means (to hang out with). How did this develop?

The story begins in the 16th century, with “hab nab” and “hab or nab.”

Etymologists have suggested these phrases represent some archaic forms of the verb “have,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

These are presumably a subjunctive form of the Old English hæbbe and Middle English habbe, along with their corresponding negatives, næbbe and nabbe.

In the 1500s the figurative meaning of “hab nab” and “hab or nab,” the OED says, was “get or lose, hit or miss, succeed or fail; however it may turn out, anyhow; at a venture, at random.”

The dictionary has examples of “hab nab” being used this way into the 19th century.

In the OED’s earliest written example, recorded in 1530, the phrase appeared as “by habbe or by nabbe.”

In 1542, it appeared in a translation from the Apothegms of Erasmus: “habbe or nhabbe to wynne all, or to lese all.”

Published references in the OED indicate that an “o” spelling of the phrase first showed up in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (circa 1601-2): “Hob, nob, is his word: giu’t or take’t.”

The OED says the phrase with the “o” spelling had all the same meanings of “hab nab,” plus “have or have not.”

By the 1700s, various “hobnob” usages had become drinking phrases. As the OED says, these phrases (probably in the sense of “give and take”) were “used by two persons drinking to each other.”

The phrases “to drink hob or nob” and “to drink hob a nob,” according to the dictionary, meant “to drink to each other alternately, to take wine with each other with clinking of glasses.”

Here’s the OED’s earliest citation for a drinking sense, from Samuel Foote’s The Englishman Return’d From Paris: A Farce (1756): “Then … they proceed to demolish the Substantials, with, perhaps, an occasional Interruption, of, Here’s to you, friends, Hob or Nob, Your Love and mine.”

Oliver Goldsmith used the expression this way in his novel The Citizen of the World (1762): “Hob nob, Doctor, which do you chuse, white or red?”

In 1761, “hobnob” was used as a noun for a sentiment or phrase (like a “toast”) used in drinking. And in 1763, the OED says, it was first recorded as a verb, meaning “to drink to each other, drink together.”

In its earliest appearances as a verb meaning to drink, “hobnob” was two separate words (“to hob or nob” or “to hob and nob”). And the verbal phrase persisted in that form through much of the 19th century.

But in the 1820s, people also began using a combined form, “hob-nob” or “hobnob.” And that’s also when “hobnob” acquired the meaning it has today—to associate familiarly, to be on familiar terms, and so on.

As for “hobknob,” the spelling you asked about, we can’t find any authoritative example of it, though not surprisingly it’s alive and well on Google (along with “hob-knob” and “hob knob”).

Check out our books about the English language

Q: Do you know the origins of “shilly-shally”?

A: Yes. No shilly-shallying from us!

The phrase (which can be used as a verb, an adjective, an adverb, or a noun) refers to indecision, hesitation, vacillation, or procrastination.

An early version of the expression entered English in the 17th century as part of the verbal phrase “to stand shall I, shall I” (meaning to vacillate). Other early versions were “to go shill-I shall-I” and “to stand at shilly-shally.”

The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary for the verbal phrase is from a 1674 medical text that refers to drugs “that will not stand shall I? shall I? but will fall to work on the Disease presently.”

The shorter verbal phrase “to shilly-shally” showed up in the late 18th century, according to citations in the OED. The first example is from Fanny Burney’s 1782 novel Cecilia: “So I suppose he’ll shilly shally till somebody else will cry snap, and take her.”

The adverb, noun, and adjective all showed up in the 18th century, according to published references in the OED. Here are a few examples that we found interesting (they’re not the earliest ones in the dictionary).

Thomas Jefferson uses the phrase adjectivally in this 1792 quotation from his writings: “I had heard him say that this constitution was a shilly-shally thing, of mere milk and water, which would not last.”

Robert Browning uses it adverbially in his 1873 poem Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, when he refers to someone “At shilly-shally, may he knock or no / At his own door in his own house and home.”

And here’s an 1876 example of the noun from George Eliot’s novel Daniel Deronda: “What I wished to point out to you was, that there can be no shilly-shally now.”

A final note: At around the same time the verb “shall” gave us “shilly-shally,” the verb “dally” gave us “dilly-dally” and the adjective “washy” (water-logged) gave us “wishy-washy.” A bit earlier, the verb “will” and the now-obsolete verb “nill” (to be unwilling) gave us “willy-nilly.”

Check out our books about the English language

Q: Your recent post about “foreign” vs. “international” sent me to the dictionary to check the etymology of “foreign” and its strange spelling. I didn’t find a “g” in its Middle English, Old French, or Latin ancestors. So where does the “g” come from?

A: The “g” in “foreign” has no business there. But it is there, of course. Here’s the story.

The word was originally “g”-less, but the “g” crept in during the 16th century, perhaps in confusion with the spelling of “reign” or “sovereign,” or in an attempt to make the spellings analogous.

Just as it wasn’t always spelled the way it is now, “foreign” didn’t always mean what it does today.

Etymologically, “foreign” means out of doors. It was adopted from the Old French word forein or forain, which in turn came from the late Latin foranus, which is derived from forus (out of doors, outside, abroad).

Interestingly, the word “forest” is related to “foreign.” The word “forest” originally meant outside woods—that is, unfenced woods, or those outside the walls of a park.

But back to “foreign.” When it entered English in the 13th century, it was spelled “forene” or “forren” (later “foreyne,” “forein,” and so on). And it originally meant out of doors or outside.

For example, the Oxford English Dictionary notes that a “chambre forene” (or “chamber foreign”) was a privy.

By the early 15th century, the sense of “abroad”—that is, from other countries—came to the fore. In the following century, as we noted, the “g” spelling was first recorded, but it didn’t become established until sometime in the 17th century.

Check out our books about the English language

[Note: This post was updated on Sept. 8, 2021.]

Q: I was wondering if you could give me the current countries that use the word “ilk” (usage example: “my children = my ilk”). I know it is often used in the southern USA, but is it used in India, Ireland, etc.? Any information will be greatly appreciated.

A: English speakers don’t usually refer to their children as their ilk. In contemporary English, the noun “ilk” means type or kind, as in “He doesn’t trust bankers, brokers, and people of that ilk.”

That’s the way the word is defined in standard American and British dictionaries. And that’s how it’s used in the US, UK, India, Ireland, and elsewhere that English is spoken.

We’ve come to that conclusion after a search of dictionaries and newspaper archives in various countries.

The word “ilk” has had many other meanings since it first showed up in Old English in the 800s. But as far as we can tell, it’s never meant one’s offspring.

As an adjective, it once meant same or identical. And as a pronoun, it once meant the same person or the same thing. But those senses are now considered obsolete.

One older sense survives in Scottish English, where the pronoun means the place where someone, especially a member of the landed gentry, is from. So “Macquarie of that ilk” would be another way of saying “Macquarie of Macquarie.”

Although “ilk” is an ancient word, its modern sense of type or sort is relatively new. The earliest example of the usage in the Oxford English Dictionary dates from the late 1700s.

An etymology note in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) says the modern sense of the word grew out of the Scottish usage.

American Heritage adds that the underlying meaning of the word reflects the obsolete sense of sameness in the Old English and Middle English versions of “ilk.”

“The ancestors of ilk, Old English ilca and Middle English ilke, were common words,” AH says, “usually appearing with such words as the or that, but the word hardly survived the Middle Ages in those uses.”

You’re probably wondering if the noun “ilk” is related to the noun “like,” as in “he and his like” … “gambling and the like” … “things of that like.” They certainly look alike. And the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology says the similarity is no coincidence.

Chambers points out that ilca, the Old English ancestor of “ilk,” combines the demonstrative i (that) and lic, the root of gelic, the Old English ancestor of “like.” In other words, both “ilk” and “like” are ultimately of the same ilk.

Here’s how these related nouns are used in modern English.

“Ilk” is commonly used with either “that” or a possessive: “Mr. Collins and his [or that] ilk” … “clergymen of that [or their] ilk.”

“Like” is used today with “the,” “that,” or a possessive:  “classical music and the like” … “things of that like” … “Star Wars and its like” … “Tennyson and his like.”  And it’s used informally in the plural: “diseases the likes of measles” … “there’s no one the likes of her.”

Check out our books about the English language

Q: Is my little finger my “pinkie” because it’s pink or because it’s little?

A: Just when we think we’ve been asked every question under the sun, a new one pops up in our inbox.

So why is the digitus minimus called a pinkie? We call the little finger a “pinkie” because it’s small, not because it’s pink (and, of course, not all pinkies are pink).

The word comes from Scots English. The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest citation is from the first edition of John Jamieson’s An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1808).

Jamieson, who was an antiquary and philologist, defined the word this way: “Pinkie, the little finger; a term mostly used by children, or in talking to them.”

The Scots term may have originated in the nursery, but it soon graduated. In his novel The Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith (1828), the Scottish poet and physician David Macbeth Moir wrote: “His pinkie was hacked off by a dragoon.”

The OED says “pinkie” (also spelled “pinky” and occasionally used for the little toe) is derived from an earlier noun, “pink,” a now obsolete 16th-century Scottish word for “a very small person or creature; a brat; an elf.”

In the 17th century, this same word was used in Scotland to mean a very small thing, like a speck or tiny hole. Until the 18th century, the word was spelled “pinck” or “pinke.”

All of these Scottish words are of “uncertain” origin, the OED says. But there could be a Dutch connection. As the OED notes, similar words in Dutch and West Frisian (pinck, pink, pinke) had been used earlier to mean the little finger.

The original Dutch pinck is described as “of unknown origin, perhaps originally children’s language.” The modern Dutch for the little finger, pinkje, emphasizes the littleness idea by adding the diminutive suffix –je (similar to our suffixes “-y” and “-ie”).

The OED doesn’t go so far as to say the Scottish word came from Dutch. But some etymologists make the leap. The Chambers Dictionary of Etymology says “pinkie,” meaning “the smallest finger,” was “borrowed from Dutch pinkje, diminutive of pink little finger.”

As we said earlier, the color pink is no relation—at least not directly. The color was named after a garden flower, the pink (a dianthus).

Chambers explains: “About 1720 the plant name began to be used attributively in the sense of having the color of the garden pink when pale or light red, of a pale rose color.”

The name of the flower, which we have in profusion in our garden, was first recorded in the late 1500s, but we don’t know its origin.

The OED says there may be a connection with an old use of “pink” to mean “pink eye” or “little eye.” Or perhaps the flower got its name because of its jagged edge, since the verb “pink” once meant to ornament by cutting holes or slits.

The verb “pink” now means, among other things, to cut with a zigzag edge, the kind of finished edge you get when using pinking shears or scissors.

Check out our books about the English language

Q: I cringe every time someone says “I’m going golfing” or “Did you go golfing today?” I tell them “Golf is not a verb! You don’t go tennis-ing or basketball-ing, do you?” But no one seems to care. Has the word “golf” become a verb after all this misuse?

A: We hate to disappoint you, but “golf” is indeed a legitimate verb. It’s listed as such in standard dictionaries, including The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.).

In fact, “golf” has been used as a verb for more than 200 years. The Oxford English Dictionary’s first citation is from the autobiography of a golfing parson, the Rev. Alexander Carlyle, a leading figure in the Church of Scotland in the 18th century.

In the OED’s citation, Carlyle uses a derivative of the verb, a participial adjective: “We crossed the river to the golfing-ground.” (Carlyle, who died in 1805, wrote his autobiography some time in his final years. It wasn’t published until 1860.)

Another well-known Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, used the verb more straightforwardly: “You might golf if you wanted” (from “The Lantern-Bearers,” a story published in Scribner’s magazine, February 1888).

As for the noun “golf,” it’s very old, as you probably know. The oldest existing written reference to the game is from a 15th-century manuscript in which golf and football were banned in Scotland.

Here’s the OED’s first citation, from a passage in the Scottish Acts of Parliament enacted in 1457, during the reign of James II of Scotland: “And at the fut bal ande the golf be vtterly cryt downe and nocht vsyt.” (Translation: “And that the football and the golf be utterly cried down and not used.”)

The game of golf, as the OED notes, is “of considerable antiquity in Scotland.” And it’s surely older than that first citation in the dictionary.

If the sport was so popular that it had to be banned, then obviously both the game and the word “golf” were around for quite some time before that 15th-century law was passed.

Why the ban? Apparently the military-minded Scottish kings felt that able-bodied men should be busying themselves with longbows instead of golf clubs. In the end, the prohibition proved futile, and James IV eventually took up the game himself.

But to get back to the noun “golf,” its origin is obscure. The first recorded spelling was “golf,” though later Middle English spellings included “gouff,” “goiff,” and “golfe.”

The OED notes that the word is “commonly supposed to be an adoption” of a Dutch word, kolf or kolv, which means “club” and refers to “the stick, club, or bat, used in several games of the nature of tennis, croquet, hockey, etc.”

So did the game or golf originate in the Netherlands? Sports historians have debated the issue for years. It’s perhaps inevitable that when you’re talking about a game that involves hitting balls with sticks, you’re going to get disagreement about where it came from.

The OED seems to come down on the side of Scotland as the origin: “None of the Dutch games have been convincingly identified with golf, nor is it certain that kolf was ever used to denote the game as well as the implement, though the game was and is called kolven.”

In some modern Scots dialects, the OED notes, the word for “golf” is gowf, which literally means “a blow with the open hand.” The pronunciation roughly rhymes with “loaf.”

This Scottish version apparently influenced an “l”-less pronunciation of “golf” (it rhymes with “off”) that the OED describes as “somewhat fashionable in England.”

Check out our books about the English language